Salvation Army thrift closet opens

January 8, 2014

MARIETTA - The Salvation Army in Marietta will open its new thrift store today at 136 Front St.

The unit closed its former Thrift Store at 313 Greene St. at the end of October and announced in November that a new thrift closet would be started in January at the Front Street location, an attempt to partially fill the hole left by the thrift store.

It will be stocked with clothing essentials that people relied on buying from the former store. Maj. Karen Garrett said the closet is ready to open its doors Wednesday. "It's unbelievable," Garrett said. "(The time) has arrived."

Garrett also said a rummage sale would more than likely take place for clothing and items that there was limited space for.

"It'll be times when we have an accumulation of things," she said. "It'll be maybe on a Friday once every couple of months. I don't know if we're doing a bag sale, but probably not because there are things other than clothes. I imagine we'll have it upstairs in the gym and lay (items) out on tables."

Though the new thrift closet takes up only a small fraction of the space that made up the thrift store, it's fully stocked with clothing.

"It's not very big," Garrett said. "It's bigger than a walk-in (closet), but not by much. We have a couple volunteers manning it, taking a couple people in at a time. It's not big enough to have more than three or four people walking around. It's full of clothes and we also have shoes."

Even though Garrett said she was heartbroken when the thrift store closed, she's looking forward to opening the thrift closet, as are numerous others.

"There have been people calling, people dropping stuff off," she said. "They're excited about it."

Garrett said the small store is a work in progress because by comparison, the thrift store was so much bigger.

"People have to get used to it," Garrett said. "We might have to tweak it here and there. I have no idea the number of people that will come, but I think people will be happy."